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FEATURE FOCUS


JACOB WONG, PAGE 16


Imports get to the core of local tastes


Taiwanese, US and even Indian titles overshadowed Hong Kong fare in 2011. Liz Shackleton reports on a territory which is looking abroad for its latest blockbuster


Apple Of My Eye, which grossed nearly $8m to become the biggest ever Chinese-language release in Hong Kong. A huge hit in Taiwan, where it was also released by Fox, the fi lm fl ourished on word- of-mouth and repeat viewings. Based on the direc- tor’s own experiences, it features a young man on his way to a wedding, reminiscing about his days at high school. “It had a unique way of capturing young movie-


T


goers as well as older ones,” says Fox’s senior vice- president, Asia Pacific, Sunder Kimatrai, when asked to explain the fi lm’s success. “Those experi- ences of fi rst love, fi rst heartbreak, are so universal they translate to any culture, but they hadn’t been told in this way in this part of the world before.” With its combination of romance and gross-out


humour, the fi lm also appealed to both sexes. But on the whole Hollywood fi lms, particularly effects- laden 3D spectaculars, continue to rule the roost in Hong Kong — Apple ranked third in the 2011 top 10 behind the latest instalments in the Transformers and Harry Potter series.


he big surprise at the Hong Kong box offi ce over the past year has been the success of Taiwanese romantic comedy You Are The


Likewise, last Christmas, Hong Kong audiences


‘You Are The Apple Of My Eye had a unique way of capturing young movie- goers as well


as older ones’ Sunder Kimatrai, Fox


favoured Mission: Impossible — Ghost Protocol and Sherlock Holmes: A Game Of Shadows over the big Chinese end-of-year release, Tsui Hark’s The Flying Swords Of Dragon Gate, despite that fi lm’s high- quality 3D. And during the recent Chinese New Year holiday (January 23-25), Journey 2: The Myste- rious Island streaked ahead of the local Chinese New Year comedies and Dante Lam’s globe-trot- ting adventure The Viral Factor. As elsewhere around the world, this trend


towards premium fare is resulting in an overall upwards trend in ticket sales. According to the Hong Kong Motion Picture Industry Association (MPIA), box offi ce grew by almost 4% to $177.8m (HK$1.38bn) in 2011, despite a decrease in the number of releases from 286 in 2010 to 276 last year. Hong Kong movies had only a 20.2% market


share compared to 22.6% in 2010. Local producers are making fewer films specifically for the local market and Hong Kong audiences tend to reject the bigger budget Hong Kong-China co-produc- tions, which anyway make most of their returns on the mainland. Tellingly, the two Hong Kong fi lms


to rank in the top 10 — 3D erotic drama Sex And Zen: Extreme Ecstasy and I Love Hong Kong (2011) — were not co-productions with China. Hong Kong audiences also seem to have turned


their backs on Korean and Japanese films — no Korean releases and only two Japanese fi lms (The Borrower Arrietty and Umizaru 3) ranked in the top 100. However, another surprise was the success of Bollywood title 3 Idiots, which grossed $3m to rank number 14 in Rentrak’s year-end chart. Edko Films released it nearly two years after its Indian release, as it was waiting for the fi lm to pass censorship in mainland China. Edko’s Audrey Lee says its was the fi lm’s humour


and subject matter, especially the storyline about the pressures of the education system, that struck a chord with local audiences, and that it remains dif- ficult to release most Bollywood films in Hong Kong. “We polished the subtitles to help Hong Kong


people understand the references,” explains Lee. “It catered to a wide audience — professionals, par- ents and retirees — and it’s been a long time since we’ve seen people in the cinema laugh so fre- quently.”


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You Are The Apple Of My Eye


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